[even on the best of days, her own mind is a mess, muddled and tangled; as the connection between them amplifies, that tangle becomes worse than she's ever known. only it's — familiar in some ways, in many ways, what she's getting. it's a reflection. it's....
into the shared communion, first, comes the cold fear of a young child who's lost her parents — who's forever lost any approximation of home. fear becomes resentment, becomes bitterness, becomes stashing away all connection to a coward, a traitor of a father to the point that any reference to it had felt like a violation.
(it especially had from the alliance's general draven; it's a shudder of a feeling that comes with his voice:
imagine if the imperial authorities had found out who you really were, jyn erso?)
and she feels —
trapped, as she often as — in the cave on lah'mu, in the bunker on tamsye prime after saw had left her behind, in the cargo holds of imperial freighters, in well more than one prison cell.... and trapped as she is right now, underground, with no unsealed exits.
muted anger from byleth serves to ignite her own, as easy as breathing. there's the sense that it's pushed her through her days and against nearly every person she's encountered; it's looked for fights everywhere, because that's what it means to survive under an empire. it's what's needed to take a chance against that empire, fueled a resolve that had driven her to act in spite of an alliance council unwilling to do so.
(her own voice: what chance do we have? the question is 'what choice'?)
but all fires burn out, eventually — and so, too, does jyn come to die, on the sands of scarif.
the residual warmth of the meridian within leaves her, transferring to byleth, and in its place —
zenith runs through her veins instead, cool and calm. peaceful, like what had come over her in her last moments; like cassian's voice in her ear (your father would've been proud of you, jyn), like the feeling of his arms around her as the blast had come closer.
like what had at the end, for the first time since she was a child, been a feeling of home.
it's that, his longing, her vague flickering memory, that lingers between them as the connection starts to pull back — different, but also the same.
and so are they, and their choices; different, but also the same.
when jyn casts a line into the silence, her voice is soft.]
no subject
into the shared communion, first, comes the cold fear of a young child who's lost her parents — who's forever lost any approximation of home. fear becomes resentment, becomes bitterness, becomes stashing away all connection to a coward, a traitor of a father to the point that any reference to it had felt like a violation.
(it especially had from the alliance's general draven; it's a shudder of a feeling that comes with his voice:
imagine if the imperial authorities had found out who you really were, jyn erso?)
and she feels —
trapped, as she often as — in the cave on lah'mu, in the bunker on tamsye prime after saw had left her behind, in the cargo holds of imperial freighters, in well more than one prison cell.... and trapped as she is right now, underground, with no unsealed exits.
muted anger from byleth serves to ignite her own, as easy as breathing. there's the sense that it's pushed her through her days and against nearly every person she's encountered; it's looked for fights everywhere, because that's what it means to survive under an empire. it's what's needed to take a chance against that empire, fueled a resolve that had driven her to act in spite of an alliance council unwilling to do so.
(her own voice: what chance do we have? the question is 'what choice'?)
but all fires burn out, eventually — and so, too, does jyn come to die, on the sands of scarif.
the residual warmth of the meridian within leaves her, transferring to byleth, and in its place —
zenith runs through her veins instead, cool and calm. peaceful, like what had come over her in her last moments; like cassian's voice in her ear (your father would've been proud of you, jyn), like the feeling of his arms around her as the blast had come closer.
like what had at the end, for the first time since she was a child, been a feeling of home.
it's that, his longing, her vague flickering memory, that lingers between them as the connection starts to pull back — different, but also the same.
and so are they, and their choices; different, but also the same.
when jyn casts a line into the silence, her voice is soft.]
Did that help?